The 10-man vs 25-man debate

[Yertle4]

How would the latest hotfixes to Baleroc 25HM (lower health, Vital Spark applies per 5 stacks rather than 3) and Staghelm 25HM (lower health) affect the opinions expressed in the article?

[Wince]

How would the latest hotfixes to Baleroc 25HM (lower health, Vital Spark applies per 5 stacks rather than 3) and Staghelm 25HM (lower health) affect the opinions expressed in the article?

Maybe but really just MAYBE the fact that it was only the 25 man versions that they thought needed the hp nerf does indeed say that Blizzard were quite "happy" with 10 man encounters, but found 25 man ones a bit too difficult. Which if it`s true would additionally prove what Paragon is saying since the beginning that the dps requirements per person were simply a lot higher in 25 man.

[Sun_Tzu]

I think they are trying to force people to take more healers. Which is fair enough, it should hardly be considered the intent for semi-hardcore guilds to be leaving half their healers outside of the instance, even if the hardcores should be expected to comply.

[arx]

How would the latest hotfixes to Baleroc 25HM (lower health, Vital Spark applies per 5 stacks rather than 3) and Staghelm 25HM (lower health) affect the opinions expressed in the article?

They even the playing field a bit. We killed Baleroc with six healers this week, and as a rough estimate, the kill probably would have taken as long as with 4 on the first week if you take the gear upgrades into account. My main gripe with the 10-man version was that you can have plenty of healing and still easily have enough dps, and the change definitely brings 25 closer to that. Maybe per 4 would have been better than per 5 if you wanted good 10/25 balance, but then again, I'd have changed the 10 version and left 25 as it was anyway.

Majordomo is a lot easier now if you didn't do a lot of AD shenanigans previously. 10% less hp in 25 is not nearly enough to balance them, but obviously they're a bit closer now. Again, I'd have left 25 as it was (or maybe nerf like 2% to account for AD), but at least the gap isn't as wide now.

[Sun_Tzu]

I don't know if the soaking strategies on Domo really needed to be nerfed, after all, figuring out how it works for your guild entailed a decent amount of work, perhaps more so than would have been used making the mostly cat-form strategy work. It just seems like Blizzard arbitrarily picked a side between two viable ways of doing the same boss. Unless the fundamentals of the game is broken, it really shouldn't concern them how the bosses are being defeated, or else any creative strategy is quickly on the path to being outlawed, leaving only the "Blizzard sanctioned" way.

[arx]

It's more or less the same thing as Rip (and Mages & co afterwards before the buff changed) on Nefarian. Everything is working as advertised, but some classes having a huge advantage isn't really a good thing.

One AD bought you about 30 seconds (give or take) of DPS time during the fight, which should amount to about 25-30M hp considering the buff. You could say roughly that a Paladin tank was equivalent to having +1 dps in the raid. The "soaking strats" weren't really proper strategies at all, just tricks to increase the raid dps. Everyone was doing it with the cat-form strategy to begin with (in 25).

[Ruffles]

Hey,

My point of view for 10 vs 25 man:

10 man advantages:
- It's a lot easier to find 10 great players than 25 great players. (equally skilled)
- There a lot of free space on 10 man which makes the fight a lot easier for those fights that requires spreading.
- Less adds on 10 man.
- The boss fights are shorter in 10 man.

10 man and 25 man advantages and disadvantages:
- Loot: 2 items in 10 man and 6 in 25 man which is the same drop ratio. About people saying the same item that no one needs drop lots of times. It's same on 25 man , the item that no one needs may drop twice or 3 times per kill which means half of the loot is DEed. We are talking about RNG here.
- Raid setups: Both 10 man and 25 man raids can have a raid composition which have all the buffs and debuffs but most of the 10 man guilds just go without all the buffs cuz they can't wait for the specific class to join their guild. This also happens on 25 man in some guilds where the raid setup for some bosses is not the most optimal and they can't wait for the specific class to join their guild.You can do the same DPS/HPS in both difficulties if you have all the buffs.
I know that most of the 10 man guilds play with either ranged heavy team or melee heavy team and they have problems with some bosses just because they don't have the right raid composition for that boss.
- Mistakes: 1 death in 10 man and 3 in 25 man (with used combat resses). If you lose 1 player in 10 man on a progress boss that requires some more healing or DPS you call a wipe. If you lose 3 people on 25 man you also call a wipe because the boss has specific healing / DPS requirements (most of the bosses in Tier 12 heroic are a DPS race). The difficulty doesn't matter because in both raid sizes you might need everyone alive to kill a boss (for the first time).
- Rotation of interrupts: you must have a rotation of interrupts for the boss in both raid sizes else it'll be chaos.
- Recruitment: You cannot always find the right people with the classes / specs your guild needs.

25 man disadvantages:
The space is just not enough for some bosses where you have to be spread and there's a higher chance that someone can wipe the raid if he/she makes the wrong move.The positioning is a lot different than 10 man. You have to find a different tactics to solve this problem.
- It's harder to find 25 equally skilled players for your team.

25 man Advantages:
- The legendary quests can be done faster in 25 man (talking about Dragonwrath the staff) because of higher drop rate.

10 man will never be the same as 25 man. Bring back (10 player) and (25 player) achievements! (Also do this for the Realm First! or make it only 25 man like Wrath of the Lich King).
According to Paragon's comparison, Firelands 10 man heroic looks easier ( not because they already knew the tactics from 25 man but because of the requirements.)
- It's all about how Blizzard tune the bosses (T11 heroic 10 man was harder than 25 man at the start and after some time the nerfs came and 10 man heroic was easier than 25 man heroic.)
- I don't think there are 10 man guilds that raid as hardcore as Paragon or Ensidia or Method or Vodka (7 days a week).
- Most of the hardcore 10 man guilds are 5 days a week and that's why they are not really able to get a world first before the 25 man guilds (10 man heroic kill before 25 man heroic kill).


- All you need is the right people and the right setup to kill the boss, the difficulty doesn't matter.

NOTE: I might have missed a lot of things or some of them are already mentioned in the posts above me but these came first on my mind. Feel free to add some if you find any advantages or disadvantages.

I know a lot of people will agree / disagree with this but I think this is the truth!
- I respect the 10 man guilds but they cannot be compared with the 25 man guilds.

Ruffles' Wall of Text hits you 999999999999 (1 Overkill) (Critical). You die!